Paycom a constant innovator with technology that empowers employees

By Scott Meacham

Oklahoma’s Paycom Software has just been named to Fast Company’s 2022 World’s Most Innovative Companies list. Paycom is the only human resources and payroll technology company to make Fast Company’s prestigious global ranking. Additionally, Paycom achieved Fast Company’s Top 10 most innovative enterprise companies. Other recognizable names for the Top 10 are enterprise giants IBM and Fiserv.

Founded in 1998 in Oklahoma City by Chad Richison, Paycom revolutionized the industry by taking the payroll process entirely online. All the tools that Paycom has developed since there live in one software suite, built at Paycom and by Paycom. There is nothing patchwork of these services. A customer enters data one time and that data flows systemwide. A lot of enterprise applications providers speak to a seamless user experience and the elimination of data duplication. At Paycom, that has been the deal since day one.

Innovating ‘Beti’

Fast Company recognized Paycom for giving employees more visibility into their paychecks. That emphasis directly relates to Paycom’s latest innovation Beti™, an industry-first technology that not only “gives employees more visibility”, it empowers employees to do their own payroll.

Paycom’s A.J. Griffin

“Beti™ has received recognition from multiple groups for being the next generation of payroll services,” said A.J. Griffin, Paycom’s Director of Government and Community Affairs. “Beti™ lets the employee drive the payroll process. Who has a more vested interest in getting the payroll right and processed on time.”

Paycom actually released Beti™ during the pandemic. One of the most impressive things about this company and Richison’s vision is that innovation never stops. The timing was particularly good for Beti™. Whether you call it the “Great Resignation” or the “Great Reassessment” as some folks are now referring to the shifts in employee beliefs and attitudes, Beti™ is ringing a bell with Paycom’s customers.

“Our clients are changing the way they work,” Griffin said. “Innovation is our core value, so our leadership continues to push. What is better and faster for our customers. The thing I enjoy the most about Paycom is that we are never finished. I had a math teacher in high school who said that ‘you are never in the land of the done.’ That is how it is at Paycom. We are never in the land of the done.”

Paycom is constantly looking around corners for the next thing that needs to happen to make their solutions work better for the employee.

“We are all about employees and workers and making their lives more convenient,” said Griffin. “The next generation of leaders have grown up with technology. they want better technology in the marketplace. The technology they use to order their coffee should not be better than the technology they use to do their work.”

Leadership Diversity

Here is another compelling point about Paycom. About 47 percent of the firm’s management team are women. The company has been recognized as one of the best companies for women in the country.

“The human resources space has long been dominated by women,” Griffin said. “To have a technology company where women are leading in management and a majority female company is part of the reason we have been so successful.”

And how did that happen? One way is through a series that Paycom calls Better Conversations. “It is an opportunity for employees to have meaningful conversations around diversity and belonging,” Griffin said. “Our leaders cast a vision and ask us all to come along. These conversations are about creating our culture; they are the way we approach our work.”

Ask virtually any leader in corporate human resources where they expect the next big idea to come from, and they will likely say Paycom. That is because this company is truly a constant innovator — and because they do that innovation here in Oklahoma.

“If you look at the history of our state,” Griffin said, “innovation and entrepreneurship is grounded in who we are as a people. All the way back to the beginning, we are always finding new ways of doing things.”

Scott Meacham CEO of i2E Inc., a nonprofit corporation that mentors many of the state’s technology-based startup companies. i2E receives state support from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology and is an integral part of Oklahoma’s Innovation Model. Contact Meacham at i2E_Comments@i2E.org.